BY DANIEL SIMS
Special to the News
On 5 November 2024 Donald John Trump was declared president elect, making him the second person to win two non-consecutive terms in American history. To say the campaign was divisive is an understatement. Yet Trump not only has enough electors to be confirmed as president in January 2025, but also received the most votes. Short of overturning the election results, he will be president again.
As a Canadian I find it interesting that we are so fascinated by the election of another country. Still, given the position on the United States, I get it. To paraphrase Pierre Elliot Trudeau, “They are the elephant in our bed.” Whether we like it or not, who gets elected matters. And yet I think too many people are confused as how he could have possibly won. Let me present some reasons.
First, Trump sold hope as part of his campaign. Bear in mind that it does not matter whether or not he can actually provide it, he still promised it, and it appears enough people believed him to make him president. It is not a unique election promise, but, and this where it becomes important that he was not president from 2020 to 2024, he was able to lay the blame for many things on the Biden administration. When things go wrong the person in power gets blamed, even if they are not responsible for what happened. It is unfortunate, but it is the way of the world. It is therefore the task of the incumbent to convince voters that they can fix the situation, and it would appear Harris failed to convince enough Americans to win.
Second, Trump kept his supporters upset about the 2020 election. Let’s be clear, he lost that election, but there were more than enough people who believe that he won and had the election stolen from him. Love him or hate him, he was able to craft a narrative of persecution of not only himself, but also his supporters. The end result is that many of the people who voted for him did not care that he was a convicted felon because in their mind he was only convicted because of who he is, not what he had done. It helped that he has courted the evangelical vote, and a hallmark of evangelical theology is that the world persecutes the faithful. He embraced this narrative and utilized a number of events as proof positive for it. For example, the raid on Miller’s Organic Farm in January 2024 by United Stated Department of Agriculture over tainted food is often credit with securing Trump the Amish vote, while the killing of Peanut the Squirrel by New York State was used a rallying cry against the government in general. Are Biden or Harris responsible for either event? No, but as the people at the top they are easy to blame and during an election that matters. When I first heard about Peanut my gut response was that it would hurt Harris and I think it did.
And finally, despite all the talk about cancel culture, people are rarely cancelled for long, and a lot of people do not care. People are shocked that others would vote for Trump because he is a racist. Yet, Canada has three times elected a man who cannot say how many times he has been in blackface. Here’s the thing about racism, depending on how you define it everyone is a racist, and many of us know someone who would say is racist, but still are willing to interact with, because we know it is not their only character trait. The same thing is true for the other flaws Trump has. It does not make these flaws better and I am not saying racism is ever okay, but a lot of people do not care, or at least do not care enough to not vote for him. And that is assuming they are even willing to admit Trump is a racist and/or that racism is bad. Equity, diversity, and inclusion have their place, but when done poorly it can reinforce that which it seeks to change and/or trivialize it.
Would I have voted for Trump? No. But if we want to end the divisiveness that is becoming sharper and sharper when it comes to politics, we need to try to understand why people hold different views and/or support people we do not instead of just dismissing them as racist, sexist, or stupid.
Daniel Sims is Associate Professor, First Nations Studies, University of Northern British Columbia.